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Retreat into Competence

You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes
sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems
to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then
sometimes you can come up with something.

Context

You are beginning to realize how little you know, or perhaps
you have taken on a new challenge and things aren’t working out so well. Or
both.

Problem

As you are introduced to the vast reaches of your ignorance you
are overwhelmed.

Solution

Pull back, then launch forward like a stone from a catapult.
Retreat briefly into your competence to regain your composure. Take
some time to build something that you know how to build. Then use that
experience to recognize how far you’ve come and how much you are
currently capable of.

An apprenticeship is a roller-coaster ride. You will experience
the thrill of learning new technologies, leveraging your knowledge and
creativity to deliver value to your customers. But you will also
experience the heart-in-your-throat terror of perceiving just how
little you know compared to the craftsmen and experts you meet along
the way. It can be overwhelming, particularly when a deadline is
looming or when you’re dealing with production issues. Take heart.
This is a normal and inevitable phenomenon along The Long Road. Overcoming the fear of
your own incompetence is the bridge between Expose Your Ignorance and Confront Your
Ignorance.

This pattern is most relevant for people who have stretched
themselves far beyond their ability. If your apprenticeship has you
taking reasonable-sized steps forward, taking on gradually increasing
responsibilities and technical complexity, then you may not need to
take shelter in this pattern. But if you are really struggling or are
barely keeping your head above water in The Deep End, look for opportunities to
temporarily retreat. Sometimes you need to take one step back in order
to take two steps forward. When you do this, it is important to turn
that backward movement into forward momentum as quickly as possible.
That forward momentum is revealed in your possession of more knowledge
and greater skill than you had yesterday.

Going backward makes this a risky pattern use, however. Without
a consciously chosen limit on how long and how far you retreat, you
may find yourself merely surrendering to your fear of failure. It can
be very comforting to delve ever deeper into the things you know how
to do well. The rewards of expertise are tangible and immediate, but
the risks may not surface until it’s too late to do anything about
them. When your expertise eventually becomes obsolete, you will be
forced to once again face the vast reaches of your ignorance, but this
time you may be out of the habit of learning new things and starting
again will be that much more painful. In this scenario, the solution
to the feeling of being overwhelmed becomes worse than the
problem.

To prevent this from happening, you must accept that this
pattern is only a short-term fix while you gather your strength to
bounce back. Set a time limit (or “timebox”) for yourself, such as “I
will spend the next 10 minutes refactoring the JavaScript validation
for this page before I optimize the SQL queries that provide the
data.” Or “I will spend the next four hours implementing the
command-line interface for this tool before I learn how to call this
third-party SOAP API.” Or “I will spend the rest of today improving
our test coverage before taking on the job of optimizing our code that
is affected by Python’s Global Interpreter Lock.”

Another important aspect of this solution is to use the
temporary break to seek support from the mentors and Kindred Spirits you have gathered
around you. With their support and the boost of a recent display of
competence, you should be better equipped to handle the inevitable
bumps on the road when you try again.

Action

Pick something self-contained that you know really well and
reimplement it. For instance, Ade likes to implement caching
algorithms because they can range from the trivial to the highly
complex. They also allow opportunities to reinforce his intuition
about design and algorithmic complexity.